Page:Care and Management of Rabbits.djvu/24

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CARE AND MANAGEMENT OF RABBITS

stock, but there is a good profit in raising meat for market. In my own neighborhood rabbit meat sells for as much as 65 cents per pound dressed and it never falls below 30 cents a pound live weight. There is, of course, the necessity of building up a local demand for your meat but it is not slow in coming so long as other forms of meat continue at their high prices.

The meat of the domesticated rabbit has many things uncommon to other meat which give it good selling points. In the first place, it is of unusually fine texture, being white all over and something like the breast of a chicken, but lacking any trace of the oily substance found in fowls.

It is the most nutritious form of flesh known to science. It has been definitely established that domesticated rabbit meat is 85% pure nutrition, while beef contains only 55% nutritive value. This may be a surprise to some people, but it is another reason why people are raising rabbits.